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The new book features characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms 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 precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks 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 not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par