This latest work features characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder 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 overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
