🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par