This latest work features characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex 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 killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
