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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. 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, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman 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 oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par