This latest work is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
