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This latest work features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw 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 offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par