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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par