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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par