The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about 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 violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
