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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par