This latest work centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through 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 Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
Eva de Vries is a passionate book lover and local writer from Eindhoven.
