The new book is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
