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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "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 wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

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 wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par