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This latest work is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par