This latest work is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world 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 assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. 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. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
