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The new book centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through 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 jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par