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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone 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 significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par