The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
