🔗 Share this article

The new book centers on protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par