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The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par