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The new book features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues 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 Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par