The new book features characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction 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 rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
