The new book features characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
