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The new book is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par