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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona 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 tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par