This latest work centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states 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 fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
