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This latest work features individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par