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This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par