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The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par