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The new book features characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par