The new book centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
