The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns 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, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
