🔗 Share this article

This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked 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 renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped 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 sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par