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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally 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.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par