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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par