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This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy 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 her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par