The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
