🔗 Share this article

The new book centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

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

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par