The new book is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" 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 exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when 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 getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
