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The new book features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par