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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing 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 perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par