The new book is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma 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 fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
