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This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par