The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
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 satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
