🔗 Share this article

This latest work features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse 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's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions 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 struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par