This latest work centers on protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
