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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus 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. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as 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, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt 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 control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par