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The new book is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist 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 community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, 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 seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par