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This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes 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 text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par