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This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma 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 persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par