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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par