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This latest work centers on characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par