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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book 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 fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par