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The new book centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist 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 Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par