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The new book is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par