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This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par