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This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice 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 housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. 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 marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par