The new book is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
