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The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par