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The new book centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par