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The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par