This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim 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, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
