This latest work is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet 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 with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered 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 intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
