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The new book centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems 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 social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par