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This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

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

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par