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The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to 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 considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par