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The new book features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par