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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par