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This latest work features characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par