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This latest work features individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par