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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par