This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, 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 become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
