The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
