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This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, 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. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par