This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
