The new book centers on protagonists pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
