The new book centers on protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "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 fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
