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The new book features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment 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, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par