The new book features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this 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 now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
