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This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit 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, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par