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This latest work centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par