The new book features individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, 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 locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
