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This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended 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 often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par