The new book features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer 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 Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
