The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression 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 partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
