🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par