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This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses 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" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par