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This latest work centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

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. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par