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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par