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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, 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 mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with 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 detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par