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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par