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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par