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This latest work features individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began 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, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par