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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par