This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued 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, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
