The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
