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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived 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 blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par