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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection 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 narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named 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 persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par