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The new book features protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

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. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par