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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par