The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore 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, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves 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 professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
