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This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as 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 Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner 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 story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par