The new book is populated with characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
