The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. 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 untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
