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This latest work centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems 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 the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par