This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
