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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, 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 other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally 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 the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par