This latest work is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
