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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into 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 real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure 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 difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par