This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
