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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par