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The new book centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par