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The new book centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw 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 anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par