The new book is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet 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 with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
