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The new book centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses 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 marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent 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 frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par