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The new book is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. 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 rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par