The new book features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
