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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

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 satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par