🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par