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The new book features characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations 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 speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par