This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit 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, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
