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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par