This latest work features protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail 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 nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
