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The new book is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into 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 pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par