🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par