This latest work features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
