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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative 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 identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par