This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
