The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
