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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking new beginnings, 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 intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl 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 strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par