This latest work features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
