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This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par