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This latest work centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par