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This latest work features individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked 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 – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par