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This latest work features characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par