This latest work is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
