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The new book is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par