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The new book centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par