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This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par