The new book features characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
