The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice 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 housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
