The new book features characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
