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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par