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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative 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 much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par