This latest work centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
