This latest work features individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. 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 sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
