This latest work is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
