This latest work features protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
