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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began 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 intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion 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 online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par