The new book centers on characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
