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This latest work centers on protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, 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