🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised 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 responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par