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This latest work features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par