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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par