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The new book centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated 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 middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par