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This latest work centers on characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by 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 currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors 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 deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par