🔗 Share this article

This latest work features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par