This latest work features individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
