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The new book centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par