This latest work centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
