The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
