This latest work is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
