The new book centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
