The new book features protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
