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The new book centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par