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The new book centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par