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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par