🔗 Share this article

The new book features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success 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 directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par