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The new book features individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par