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The new book centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par