The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
