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The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach 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. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par