The new book features individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself 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 blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
