The new book features protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
