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The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par