🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par