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This latest work features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par