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This latest work features characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par