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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par