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This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role 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 currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par