This latest work features protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
