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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par