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The new book features individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, 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 trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par