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This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par