This latest work is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
