The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
