The new book features characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 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 experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
