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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states 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 be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par