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This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated 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. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par