The new book centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
