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This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile 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.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par