This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
