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This latest work features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated 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 go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par