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This latest work is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer 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 assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success 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 directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par