This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
