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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion 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 America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par