This latest work is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses 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
