🔗 Share this article

This latest work features characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed 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 a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par