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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par