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The new book centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "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 perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par