The new book features individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
