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This latest work features characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par