🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par