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This latest work centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors 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 deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par