🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par