This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband 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 brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 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 experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
