The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to see 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 with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
