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The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par