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This latest work is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par