This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion 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 Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
