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This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting 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 lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent 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 boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par