The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
