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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, 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 partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par