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The new book centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, 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 standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par