This latest work features characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "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 Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
