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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par