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This latest work features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with 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 troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated 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 seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par