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This latest work is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally 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 Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. 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 point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par