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This latest work features characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" 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 the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual 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. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par