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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

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 responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par