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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par