The new book is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears 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 America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
