🔗 Share this article

This latest work features individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

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

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states 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 Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par