🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex 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 a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par