This latest work centers on characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
