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The new book features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par