This latest work centers on characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
