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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par