The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
