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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated 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 own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par