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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, 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 declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech 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 wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par