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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par