The new book is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this 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 try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder 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 Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
