This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating 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 letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting 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 herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. 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 point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
