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This latest work centers on characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

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. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par