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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par