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This latest work is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par