This latest work centers on characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
