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The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par