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This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "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 fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par