🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par