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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par