The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
