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This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished 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 devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par