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The new book is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position 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 presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter 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 Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par