The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement 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. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America 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 murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see 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 funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
