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This latest work is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par