🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par