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The new book centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment 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 online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par