This latest work features individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says 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
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par