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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion 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 America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par