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This latest work features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation 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 murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par