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This latest work features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par