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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par