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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters 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", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet 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 in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par