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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par