The new book is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation 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 says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
