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The new book features individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition 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 lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par