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The new book centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized 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 daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par