The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned 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 different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
