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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

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 reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par