This latest work features characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
