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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail 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 cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par