🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man 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 sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" 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 exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par