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This latest work centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par