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This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, 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 structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels 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 two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care 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 responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par