This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
