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The new book is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point 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 fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par