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This latest work features characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par