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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par