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The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par