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The new book centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par