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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to 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 doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par