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This latest work centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par