The new book centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion 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 online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
