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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived 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 earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp 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 titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par