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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, 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 locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner 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 was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par