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The new book features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see 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, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par