This latest work features individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, 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 perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
