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This latest work centers on characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par