The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
