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This latest work centers on characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as 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 amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par