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This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par