This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
