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This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par