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This latest work is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par