The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
