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The new book centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 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 Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par