This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
