The new book is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative 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 self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
