This latest work is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit 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 alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
