🔗 Share this article

This latest work features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked 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 much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned 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 social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par