This latest work centers on individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
