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This latest work features individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form 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 large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par