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This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. 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 shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman 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. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par