🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone 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 real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par