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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much 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 Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par