This latest work is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
