The new book features characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
