The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
