The new book centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with 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 doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
