The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
