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This latest work is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par