This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
