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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet 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, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par