This latest work features characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. 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 voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
