The new book is populated with characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. 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 killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
