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The new book is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par