The new book is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style 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 presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
