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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally 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 kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par