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This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story 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 expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par