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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

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 tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par