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The new book centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par