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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist 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 account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails 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 strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par