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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par