This latest work centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise 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 community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
