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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par