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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par