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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed 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 has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par