The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing 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
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
