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The new book features characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging 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 role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par