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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par