🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par