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This latest work centers on characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par