The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued 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 go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
