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This latest work centers on characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par