This latest work features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone 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 real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
