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This latest work features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes 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 was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par