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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par