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This latest work centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes 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 destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling 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 Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par