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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "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 fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation 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 the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par