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This latest work is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice 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 real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks 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 fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par