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This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par