This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
