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The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par