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This latest work features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par