🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is 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 tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par