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This latest work centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par