This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
