This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
