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This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

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

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par