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The new book centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par