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The new book centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression 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 social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering 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.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par