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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par