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This latest work centers on characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par