This latest work is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
