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This latest work features individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. 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, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par