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 repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
