The new book features protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
