The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "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 fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says 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 Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
