This latest work features individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
