The new book features individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks 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 online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
