🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par