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This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par