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The new book is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success 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 lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero 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 Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied 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 young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par