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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par