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This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

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 a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when 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 alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par