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The new book is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing 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