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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par