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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par