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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par