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This latest work centers on protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par