The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms 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 entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par