This latest work centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile 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 violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
