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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par