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This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par