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The new book centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into 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 much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par