The new book is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. 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 narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
