This latest work centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see 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 getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
