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The new book is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par