🔗 Share this article

This latest work features individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par