This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
