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The new book features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, 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 her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, 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