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The new book centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, 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 community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control 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 the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par