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The new book centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par