The new book features individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
