The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates 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 hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
