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The new book centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails 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 oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par