🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit 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 with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par