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This latest work features protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par