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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. 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 leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, 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 frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par