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This latest work centers on characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par