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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par