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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par