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The new book is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition 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 lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par