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This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par