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The new book features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par