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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par