The new book is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing 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 extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
