This latest work features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
