🔗 Share this article

The new book features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par