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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of 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 town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing 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 oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par