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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the 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 considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par