This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into 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 says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
