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The new book is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par