This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
