The new book features characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
