The new book is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
