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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par