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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, 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 partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par