The new book centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
