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This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par