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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par