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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par