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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – 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 is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par