The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
