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The new book features individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par