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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par