The new book features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, 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 found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, 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 researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
