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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes 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