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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states 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 social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par