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The new book centers on characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par