🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "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 hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par