The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of 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 guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
