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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much 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 not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par