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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting 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 Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par