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This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par