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The new book features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par