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This latest work features protagonists seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated 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 own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par