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The new book centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech 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 fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression 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 United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par