🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet 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 with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par