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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par