🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness 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 large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of 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 story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession 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 go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par