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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks 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 social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app 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 killed by gunfire 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 account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par