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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three 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 role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. 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 emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated 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 explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par