The new book features individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona 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 difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
