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The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued 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 individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par