This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
