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This latest work is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around 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 hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par