The new book centers on characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. 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 rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks 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 social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
