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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves 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 entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, 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 researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, 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 appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par