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The new book features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par