The new book features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses 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 the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
