The new book centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells 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 hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. 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 exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
