🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par