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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about 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 belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, 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 progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par