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The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

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 tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par