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This latest work features characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par