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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par