The new book features individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied 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 youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
