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The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par