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This latest work is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated 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 individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par