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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

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 wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par