🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par