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The new book centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. 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. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes 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 anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par