🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards 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 three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on 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 Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style 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 disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, 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 the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par