The new book features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity 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 presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
