The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
