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This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par