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This latest work features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim 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, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par