The new book features individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "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
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
