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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man 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 honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par