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The new book is populated with characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par