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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice 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 significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language 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 hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment 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 be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter 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 murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par