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This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. 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. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par