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The new book features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par