This latest work is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
