This latest work is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America 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 referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
