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The new book features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression 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 gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par