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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter 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 murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated 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 delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par