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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par