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This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par