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The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim 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 largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par