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This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is 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 struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par