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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering 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. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates 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 expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par