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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by 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 presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks 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 overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par