This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
