This latest work features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
