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This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child 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 responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into 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. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par