This latest work centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
