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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par