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This latest work features protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. 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 paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par