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This latest work centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of 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 position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension 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 speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par