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The new book is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par