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This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 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 experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par