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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par