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The new book centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing 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 abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is 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, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language 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 precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par