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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par