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This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates 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 fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression 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 might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails 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 complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par