This latest work is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
