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This latest work centers on characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. 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 manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par