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The new book features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

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

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "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 last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued 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 delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par