The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
