The new book is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
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 pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard 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 different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
