The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally 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 substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter 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 murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us 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
