🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par