The new book features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
