This latest work features individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
