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This latest work features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. 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 messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy 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 Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par