The new book centers on individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona 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 difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
