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The new book features individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role 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 currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as 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 with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par