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This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. 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 story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "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 homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par