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This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "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 wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par