The new book is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued 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 explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
