This latest work features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone 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 housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "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 fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
