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This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction 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 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

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

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems 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 social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par