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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down 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 committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par