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The new book is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par