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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par