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This latest work features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par