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The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par