The new book features protagonists seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
