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This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par