The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
