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This latest work features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "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 resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par