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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, 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 story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is 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 refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par