This latest work features characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment 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 seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
