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The new book centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par