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This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the 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 considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par