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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par