This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
